Speckled trout and redfish in the heat at Redfish University-June 1, 2011

Took a nice little break, passing on trips over the Memorial Day weekend and was met with some very warm conditions this morning. Guided Martin Peters and his children, Victor and Eva, for some hot action in East Bay. Martin is the Communications and Dealer Education Manager for Yamaha Marine Group in Kennesaw, GA. I always enjoy having the “big guys” at Yamaha, Pure Fishing, Maverick, etc. come down for some fishing here in Pensacola. Started early and ran to East Bay. Stopped at an area infested with speckled trout and the anglers immediately started yanking fish. Little Eva was pretty new to fishing so I was able to help her on the bow one-on-one with her casting and techniques. It wasn’t long before she was sailing her topwater baits, demonstrating a classic dog-walk and catching one nice speckled trout after another. I guide very few kids at Redfish University but after today and seeing her pure euthusiasm and excitement, it’s really something I would love to see more at Redfish U. in the future. Martin and Victor held their own, sticking several nice fish with some quality redfish in the mix. Found the fish on the banks, off the banks and, most importantly, around large schools of mullet. Targeted a few schools of menhaden and surface minnows, but lately, we’ve only found lots of gafftops in those areas. In my experience, the speckled trout and redfish most definitely prefer milling inside the large schools of medium to large sized mullet. This means, in my opinion, that these fish want smaller, slower moving baits such as shrimp, small crabs and especially croakers which a big trout puked on my leg this morning. The redfish have also been stuffed with small crabs, minnows and croakers. We matched the bait with Gulp! Jerkshads, very small topwaters and Gulp! 3″ Shrimp. All fish released except for a few nice trout for dinner. Sorry for the crap photo quality. Using my Kodak PlaySport which is great for HDvid but only has a 5MP cam. New camera coming soon. E Holstman

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